


Heartbeats

by Lsusanna



Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Genderbending, Genderswap, Harley's a sad puppy who must be protected at all costs, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Parent Death, Post-Iron Man 3, Rule 63, Rule 63 Clint Barton, Rule 63 Natasha Romanov, Rule 63 Pepper Potts, Science Bros, adult/child relationships, genderbent, it works, rule 63 Tony Stark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-09
Updated: 2015-01-09
Packaged: 2018-03-06 18:48:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3144743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lsusanna/pseuds/Lsusanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's no right or wrong way to go about these things, but there are definitely wrong ways things could turn out, and it would be no one's fault but Toni's. It's a balancing act, and she's proven by now she has trouble walking straight lines. </p><p>In Which, Harley Keener's mother passes away, and his father just won't step up to the plate. And so Toni and Pepper do. They're connected, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heartbeats

**Author's Note:**

> Rule 63 Tony and Pepper, plus Natasha because of Iron Man 2 dynamics, and Clint because Clintasha. 
> 
> Thanks for reading!

 

“Toni… Are you sure about this?”

 

“Yes.” There is much more conviction in that one word than she could ever feel. And Pepper knows that. That’s why he’s asking. He knows about all the decisions they’ve made as a couple, all her half-drunk rants about her feelings about children, and the confessions she’s made while—worse—completely sober. “I am.”

 

“…Are you sure?” Pepper asks, looking like he wanted to say something else, or something more, but the words were tangled in his ribs.

 

Toni sighs. “His mother died, Pep. And there aren’t any relatives. If…” She sighs again. “If there were, maybe…maybe I wouldn’t, but… He needs someone, Pepper, and… You’ve heard Clair’s stories, you know he can’t go into foster care—no one should, but not him, he’s… He’s got good fingers, and a good mind, and he could _do_ things, Pep, he could, and…” _And there’s a chance I might not ruin him_. “And I feel like…like I need to do this, Pepper,” Toni finishes quietly, hesitantly.

 

Pepper purses his lips, examining her. It gives Toni goose bumps, sometimes, how well he knows her. “If you’re sure,” he whispers, taking her by the shoulders, and Toni remembers he agreed about not having any kids because he never wanted any either—the company was his baby. “Then I’m with you.”

 

“You’re sure?” Toni whispers.

 

“I am, yes,” he says, kissing her softly.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

Harley Keener moves to the new Malibu house—safely away from any cliff edges, this time—two weeks later. He walks through the door, shoulders curved down, not taking any interest in anything around him for his depression. Pepper has his duffel over his shoulder, three fingers slipped through the straps, and Toni rests her hand at the midpoint between Harley’s neck and shoulder, and he leans into the touch, just a little.

 

Dummy comes whirring and rolling down a hall, and stops in front of Harley, cocking his head claw in assessment. Toni introduces them, and is surprised when Dummy reaches forward and softly sifts his claw through his hair.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

The first person Harley meets is Rhodey. He comes with his wife, Sandra, and they would have come with their daughter from Sandra’s first marriage, but she’s spending the week in Chicago with her father. Promises are made that they’ll soon be introduced, and predictions are made about how they’ll get on.

 

It goes well, Toni thinks; Sandra has the instincts of a mother, and takes on un-obviously comforting Harley, and she does it so much _better_ than Toni does, and she can’t help feeling inadequate and jealous, two things she doesn’t like to feel. Rhodey gets that ‘guy thing’ Pepper’s suits are somehow too tight in the shoulders too allow for, and Toni sees him struggling as much as she is.

 

Toni isn’t surprised when she finds herself alone with Rhodey in the kitchen, and she assumes some finagling was involved. “So,” he says. They stare at each other intently for a while, and a lot is said. “Do you need help carrying the pasta?” he finishes finally, still looking her straight in the eye.

 

“No,” Toni replies evenly, returning his gaze, “But you could get the bread.”

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

Toni finds Harley sitting on the balcony one day, hugging his knees, staring at the not-so-distant sea. She sits down next to his with a sigh, her legs bending in sharp perpendicular arcs in front of her. “You know…” she begins, “I lost my parents too. It wasn’t, you know, old age, or time, it just…was,” she says, opening wounds she hasn’t thought of in such a long time, but that she needs to rip the seams of now. “It…it hurt. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t…time. So…I get it.”

 

‘”How’d you get over it?” Harley mumbles.

 

“Oh, gosh, I don’t know,” Toni sighs. “…You don’t, really, not completely. But it gets…better.”

 

“Yeah?” Harley asks.

 

“Yeah,” Toni says.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

“What’re you up to?” Pepper asks, descending the stairs to the workshop.

 

“Building a stealth-mode suit,” Toni grunts, pulling on a wrench.

 

“Yeah?” Pepper replies, nonchalantly, but clearly questioning whether Toni’s relapsing into obsessive suit-building or not, seeing as she’s currently tinkering with one at three in the morning with apparent fervor.

 

“Don’t worry, I’m not being crazy, I’m just…” Toni steps back from the suit and examines her work, wiping the oil off her hands with a rag. “Harley told me, that he would add retro-reflective panels, if he built the suits, and so I’m…adding retro-reflective panels.”

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

“It’s an Iron Man,” Harley says, as he and Toni step off the stairs.

 

“Yeah, it is,” Toni says, pulling out her phone and activating the panels, “just way cooler.”

 

“Oh, wow!” Harley gasps, lighting up, running up to examine the space the suit used to occupy.

 

Toni watches him, answers his questions, and sees so damn _much_ of herself in him, in the way machinery is the only thing that’s managed to shake him from his funk, in the way he examines it with bright, hungry eyes; not satisfied by just _seeing_ it, but wanting to take it all apart, piece by piece.

 

Toni watches him, her arms crossed over her chest, and she wonders.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

“Do you think I’m cold?” Pepper asks, sitting at the kitchen table as Toni runs bananas and rum through a blender with ice.

 

“A li’l bit,” Toni says, tasting her concoction with a spoon. “You’re…cold, I’m…dysfunctional— We made a good team for a while there.”

 

“Hmm,” Pepper says, dragging his bangs away from his eyes with his fingers.

 

“Well, I mean, you’re not… _warm_ , or…cuddly, or anything, but you’re…possessive,” Toni says, backpedalling a bit.

 

“Oh well that’s much better,” Pepper says sarcastically, and possibly a little hurt.

 

“Well, I don’t mean _that_ ,” Toni says, sitting down into a chair and sliding a glass of her banana-thing across the wood of the table to Pepper. “I meant that you’re protective, and I guess I should have used that word, but it just wasn’t, I don’t know, intense enough. You’re… You protect what’s yours. Maybe you don’t do all the hugging, out in the open, but you’re there, behind the scenes, making sure they’re okay. You’re a fixer. I mean, that’s why you got that teacher fired, isn’t it?”

 

“I did _not_ get her—”

 

“Pep.”

 

“Okay _fine_.” Pepper took a sip of Toni’s concoction, barely keeping from spitting it out. “Shit.”

 

“Well, I wasn’t going for a spiked banana smoothie, more…banana-flavored rum,” Toni says in defense.

 

Pepper grimaces, leaning back in his chair. “…I think I’d rather be cuddly,” he says.

 

“I’m sure he knows you’re here for him, Pep—”

 

“Does he?” Pepper asks. “I’m at the company building here, or in D.C., or New York, or I’m out of the country wooing investors or shareholders, or Legal’s being needy, or the board’s collectively being an ass, and when I _am_ here, I sure as hell bring it all home with me. And if whenever I am with Harley I’m aloof, or whatever, how is he supposed to know?”

 

“He knows,” Toni says. “You…you’ve got a time-consuming job, and he knows that, and he _knows_.”

 

“Howard was busy,” Pepper counters quietly.

 

“No. Howard wasn’t busy, and he wasn’t cold. He was like me. Dysfunctional. He knew he didn’t want kids, because he didn’t _want_ them, or because he knew he couldn’t handle them, or because he knew he’d mess them up. I wasn’t planned—I’m the product of a lack of good birth-control options. And he wasn’t wrong; he shouldn’t have had kids—man had issues. And he stayed away after because he couldn’t get over them. At least he had enough sense to do that.”

 

Pepper looks at her. “And you?” he says softly.

 

Toni shrugs. She sighs. “Yeah,” she admits softly. “I was like that. That’s why I never wanted a kid. But…” Toni sighs. “I’m doing it. We’re doing it. So forget my issues. That’s where Howard went wrong. He couldn’t get past it.”

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

Toni pads into the kitchen, yawning widely. She slows to a stop as she hears voices. She peers around a wall, and sees Pepper and Harley sitting at the counter, steaming mugs in front of them both. Harley’s got a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, his hair sticking up in time to the sleep clinging to the circles under his eyes, though the orbs themselves are full of things, pain and apprehension among them.

 

He and Pepper continue their quiet discussion on nightmares and their causes and practical applications, and after a while, Pepper hesitantly raises his hand and rests it on Harley’s shoulder, squeezing it reassuringly.

 

Toni turns away from them, pivoting on the balls of her feet to lean against the wall for a moment, breathing. Then she goes back to bed.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

Harley makes the trip to New York, to the Tower, to meet the Avengers. Toni had had her reservations, until now. Mostly, she just didn’t want him to get hurt, and the team is a magnet for danger (but so is she, and she knows it’s hypocritical of her), and they’re all dangerous people.

 

But they’re her family. And Harley should meet them.

 

It takes Bruce about a week to get over his fear of the Other Guy, but when he does, Harley finds biochemistry interesting, if he still prefers engineering. He’s a bit star-struck by Steve, at first, but after that they get along well, and Steve approaches him with a friendliness that’s lacking in maturity to the perfect degree. Thor is much the same, if a bit rougher and more fun around the edges, but Toni thinks that’s just the Asgardian approach to children. Harley finds Asgard fascinating. He also finds the lives of super-spies fascinating, and he likes to listen to Clair and Alexi’s stories, even if Toni knows they’re sugarcoated beyond belief, and even if they argue about the details because apparently Budapest isn’t the only mission they remember differently.

 

But Harley’s a broken little soul, and Toni knows he likes the team for their quiet, too. And they’re all quiet, despite their differing personalities and the sides they all have to them. Bruce, for the way he lapses into comfortable quiets when he works, and the soft way he goes about most things, juxtaposing his alter ego. Clair, for her archer’s focus and patience, and the rough wisdom of her street smarts. Thor, for the times his age really shows, when he’s soft and pensive and kind. Alexi, for the serene and quiet way he goes about things, even if when you look closely there’s a danger, there (unless he manipulates it into something dangerously _fun_ , which would be what Toni had fallen for when he had manipulated himself into Alec Rushman), and even if the evenness is in place to hide mismatched pieces. And Steve, because when you get past the stern-jawed Captain, and the jokester, you find a man out of time, prone to memories and therefore sadness, and a thoughtful artist. They’re all quiet, and they’re all broken, and there’s nothing Toni knows better than that the fastest way to heal is to do it with others who are as far from whole as you are.

 

Toni watches as Harley learn about perspective and light and shadow from Steve, and stories about World War Two only people who were on the front lines could know. As he listens thoughtfully to Thor’s stories of patience and courage, or laughs at the ones about the battle blunders of Sif, Thor, and the Warriors Three. As Clair teaches him the basics of archery and tells him the basics of a roustie’s duties, and how they differ from a performer’s (Harley has a bit of a crush on her at one point, but it’s innocent, and it fades).  As Bruce teaches him to play chess, and as he becomes determined to become a Science Bro one day. As Alexi decidedly doesn’t teach him anything of hand-to-hand (which is quite all right, because she and Pepper have him in a class, in case he should need to defend himself). But instead, the discipline and control of those who wield power wisely—as does Thor—and endeavors to impart upon him a deep-seated sense of respect for self and life.

 

Toni watches as Rhodey and Sandra get divorced, which is fine, because it’s completely amicable, and they were always better suited for something platonic. Harley is still best friends with Sandra’s daughter, Cassandra (or Cass, as she’s more affectionately known), and they’re still inseparable—which poses a problem, because when they’re together, grinning, it usually spells the same amount of trouble that Toni and Rhodey used to get in. Toni watches it all, and she wonders.

 

The team and Rhodey are her family, and Pepper and Harley are her family. They all go hand in hand.

 

 

 

******

 

 

 

“So, did you ever get a chance to use that piñata?” Toni asks Harley one day.

 

“Yeah,” he replies, the beginnings of a slightly ashamed smile turning the edges of his mouth.

 

Toni’s expression changes in kind, and then she says, “Well, I guess that’s not the kind of stuff to be giving you anymore, huh? Not the kind of advice I should be giving.”

 

“I don’t think it matters,” Harley says, brows coming together thoughtfully.

 

And Toni thinks he’s right. Any advice is good advice, as long as it’s given in the ways that mean something, and as long as she remembers there’s no right way.

 


End file.
